A truly embarrasing attempt at an opening statement. After Drew read this, he realized he mis-judged Frank and abandoned the debate

Does God Exist?By Frank Walton

I'd like to remind our readers that the topic of the discussion is in a form of a question: "Does God exist?" This is an existential claim. That is to say, it's a question about existence; in particular, God's existence. Topics such as discrepancies in the Bible or societal norms that befit a better society do not indicate whether God literally exists. The two competing worldviews are atheism and Christianity. According to our own system of thought certain facts and evidences make sense to us. Now it wouldn't do any good to assume his view and judge mine as that would be begging the question. For instance, in his blog, Drew made the peculiar claim that "we find that the odds of sentient life occuring in the universe(assuming it only ever occurs once) is 1 in 10 sextillion. Or 1 in 10000000000000000000000. Thus, astronomical evidence speaks far more to random chance than a divine purpose." [1] To be quite frank, the above conclusion is astounding! If probability is multiplied by more improbability to the point where we have incomprehensible numbers, then there is no reason why these quantities should possess the values they do. Many scientists concur with the statistics, but assume the opposite, that the world was created with divine purpose. As scientist Fred Hoyle said, "A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics."[2] But these facts and evidences are interpreted within worldviews. Drew's view that the world came about by random chance (given his evidence) makes sense to him, but it doesn't make any sense to me (given the same evidence). So how do we resolve this problem? What we have to do is give internal critiques of our opponent's worldviews demonstrating its inability to account for human experience.Drew has put himself in quite a conundrum here. For his worldview is evidential in nature. Here he says, "The reasoning for such a belief (in atheism) is based on empirical evidince, or more accurately, the lack of such evidence to support the claim of a supernatural being, Judeo-Christian or otherwise." [3]Drew believes that something should only be believed on the basis of evidence. But if everything must have evidence prior to acceptance, then we will never be able to establish anything as true since anything trotted out as evidence would itself need to be proven, and so on ad infinitum! This isn't at all rational. Now, given the presuppositions of Christianity as a system we can account for rationality and logic. They reflect the nature of an absolute God. They are universal and eternal expressions of His unchanging character. And contrary to what Drew said, no academic Christian (at least, none that I know of) believes the laws of logic were literally made by God.[4] Given the atheist's presuppositions I don't see how he can account for logic. In a random chance universe, all logic would be a product of randomness in a world constantly evolving. If the world is in constant flux do the laws of logic evolve then? As philosopher, Arlie J. Hoover said,"One could well ask: 'If the mind, like all else in nature, is still evolving, how can we be sure that its present structure and operation guarantee any truth?' For example, did the Law of Contradiction, which is necessary for truth, evolve like the rest of the body? How can we be sure that there's not some new mental law, now struggling to be born, a law which will enable us to get even closer to the truth about reality? Would this new law confirm or contradict evolutionism and naturalism?" [5]Logic calls for abstract entities which are uniform and orderly, which brings me to my next argument: the uniformity of nature. How do we know that the laws of nature operate in the manner that it does? By seeing and testing those laws; were it not for the uniformity of nature there's just no way of doing science. However, the problem the atheist has is that not all of nature is restricted to his experience. What he would end up doing is making a hasty generalization because he's taking a small amount of evidence and universalizing it. Also, the atheist has the problem of knowing whether what he sees and tests now will apply in the past or future, because he cannot jump into the past or jump into the future. As David Hume said, we cannot see causation. You cannot know that A necessarily causes B simply because B happens to follow A at a given point in time. You can say that B may follow A most of the time, but you cannot possibly know it always has or always will. In fact Bertrand Russell admits that you can't expect the future to be like the past apart from a view of nature that accounts for its uniformity:"It has been argued that we have reason to know that the future will resemble the past, because what was the future has constantly become the past, and has always been found to resemble the past, so that we really have experience of the future, namely of times which were formerly future, which we may call past futures. But such an argument really begs the very question at issue. We have experience of past futures, but not of future futures, and the question is: Will the future futures resemble past futures? This question is not to be answered by an argument, which starts from past futures alone. We have therefore still to seek for some principle which shall enable us to know that the future will follow the same laws as the past."[6]If I were to ride my skateboard and push forward, how would I know that I would actually move forward instead of suddenly turning into a horse? Because we all know that nature is uniform and it makes life practical. How would an atheist account for this in a random chance universe though? The Christian has an advantage here because God is infinite and sovereign over the world. And in Him all things hold together. The world reflects the uniformity He imposes on it. My second proof of God's existence then utilizes the uniformity of nature, or, if you will, the "skateboard proof for God's existence." Finally, I would like to deal with my third argument: morality. As far as I can tell there are no inherent contradictions between the first premise - "evil exists" - and the second premise - "an all good God exists." First let's deal with the first premise: evil exists. How do we know what's evil anyway? What constitutes as something "evil"? The atheist is hard-pressed for an answer. Indeed in Drew's blog, he presents the problem of evil against God with the premise: "All-benevolent beings are opposed to all evil."[7]The odd thing about this is Drew is already assuming his humanistic ethic, when it's the very question at hand. How does he know what's "evil" anyway? For in the atheist worldview all morality is relative. So, whose morality is the right one? For the Christian, morality is absolute and objective since they are based on God's holy character. But if morality is subjective to the individual or culture, then Mao Zedong's persecution of the millions of Chinese dissidents were no more evil than those who decry any of those atrocities. Furthermore, in an atheist worldview man is no more morally significant than a mere animal. A red ant killing a black ant then is no more significant than a white man killing a black man! In the atheist worldview man is a mere bag of protoplasm that randomly came about. In fact atheist and evolutionist Dr. William Provine said,"Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology tells us loud and clear -- and these are basically Darwin's views. There are no gods, no purposes, and no goal-directed forces of any kind. There is no life after death. When I die, I am absolutely certain that I am going to be dead. That's the end of me. There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning in life, and no free will for humans, either." [8]You see, in atheism there really isn't anything you can call "evil" since there is no foundation for it. Now let's deal with the second premise "an all good God exists." If God allows evil for a sufficient reason, then there is no conflict with His nature if evil happens. The Bible is filled with examples where God had allowed evil to happen for a sufficient reason. You need only look at Jesus Christ, whom God allowed to be crucified on the cross. The killing of Christ was certainly evil but it was done for a sufficient reason: so "that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life" (John 3:16). My argument for morality then is my third and last argument.

Frank Walton is his own Imposter

Review of Atheismsucks.

Mix intense ignorance with a healthy dose of obnoxiousness, sprinkled liberally with spelling and grammatical errors, and top it off with a non stop barrage of personal attacks and name calling and you get atheismsucks! Atheismsucks is a fun site to visit, it’s a proverbial train wreck, with an asshole at the wheel. I’m not entirely convinced that whole site isn’t a parody designed to embarrass Christians and sucker in the 10 or 12 regular commenters who brutally damage their credibility in the process. If it is a joke, I hope he never let’s on, it’s just too priceless thinking that there are simpletons of that extreme out there. So give it a look, and if you want your comments to show up on atheismsucks, make sure they are either complimentary to the only author, Frank Walton. Or better yet post something horrible about one of his “sworn enemies” that seem to change each week. That’ll get you posted every time!